


Spring Cleaning

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluff and Crack, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Kink Meme, fun times in ered luin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the kink meme: "Dís and Thorin. Spring cleaning.</p><p>It starts out earnestly but then someone accidentally splashes water on the other, followed by a not so accidental rag thrown in return and then it's just an all-out water fight."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring Cleaning

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/6263.html?thread=15240311#t15240311
> 
> Terminology note: The 'slack tub' is the tub of water/oil/whatever blacksmiths use to cool hot metal. It is exactly as gnarly as it sounds.

The chaos could have been avoided. It began so innocuously that by the time it was over, neither party would quite remember how it all started. The day dawned inauspiciously enough, it was one of those late winter, early spring days when you saw your breath on the air when you stepped out the door in the morning, but were shrugging off your outer layers by mid-afternoon. In the next few weeks, orders would be pouring in to the dwarrow smithies in the Blue Mountains from the surrounding Mannish villages as the ground thawed and the tilling season began in earnest.  
  
The soil around the Ered Luin was hard and rocky at the best of times, but the tools made by dwarves could withstand the battering of hidden stones better than the plows of Men and it was to those noble craftsmen that short-lived race turned when they made ready to tend their fields. It was a market day, as luck would have it and the ordinarily bustling, noisy streets that wove among the smithies were largely silent. Perfect weather and perfect chance to clean out some of the grime that built up during the slower, winter months.  
  
The opportunity could not have presented itself at a better time, Dís and Thorin had no pending orders that required immediate care and their little apprentices were off for a bout of weapons training with Dwalin and would be out of their hair for the day. Fíli and Kíli, the brother and sister, smiled knowingly at each other over breakfast that morning, would make the task go by so much slower with their horseplay and larking about. Best to leave it to the adults.  
  
If only they’d known that morning what lay ahead of them in the afternoon, they would not have been so smug.  
  
Dís was crouched on the floor trying to scrub months’ accumulation of soot and filings off the base of the hearth when Thorin walked by with a bucket of water, full to the brim, for the purpose of cleaning the walls. It was close quarters, so he lifted the bucket up to get it over his sister without knocking into her. That was where all the trouble started.  
  
A bit of water, cold, drawn from an obliging stream that was being fed with the late winter runoff from higher in the mountains, splashed over the rim of the bucket and landed squarely on the part in Dís’s hair where she’d plaited it into a simple braid for work. The dwarrowdam let out an undignified yelp as icy cold water ran into her face and made a shiver go down her spine. Still, that might have been the end of it. If Thorin apologized - and he needn’t have made a big production of it, a simply grunted, “Sorry,” would have sufficed - no more would have been done about it. Even if the King-in-Exile did not express regret at his clumsiness, if he acted as though nothing of importance had happened, they might have continued the day peacefully, in relative harmony.  
  
But he did neither of those things. Instead, he _laughed_. Sniggered, really. A less generous soul might have been inclined to call the sound that emerged from betwixt his smiling lips a giggle.  
  
Dís frowned at her brother, wiping water off her brow as he turned away from her and _whistled_. Quite merrily, too. So, he thought dousing his sister like a badly behaved cat was the thing to do to lift flagging spirits, eh? Two could play at that game.

The water in the slack tub was not so cold as the water from the mountain streams, it was oily and viscous and a damned nuisance to get out of clothing. Neither of them were dressed in their finest, she reasoned and dipped her hand in the tub, flicking the oily water directly at her brother’s face.  
  
Balin always said Dís should have been an archer, with her keen eyes and sure aim; this was proof of it. Some of the nasty liquid, actually landed in Thorin’s _mouth_ and he nearly gagged on the foul, metallic taste of it. Whipping his head around he glared at her and nearly spoke. Again, it was a near-miss. If he’d acted every inch the grown dwarf, the leader of a people, the king and told her she’d had her fun now, back to work, it would have stopped there.  
  
Instead Thorin lobbed the soaking rag he was holding at his sister’s head in a movement quick as blinking and got her right in the eye. She retaliated by taking up a metal ladle, scooping up yet more water from the slack tub and drenching him with it.  
  
 _It’s a bit of a hike to and from the river,_ Thorin thought, eyeing the bucket beside him. Would it be worth it?  
  
 _Worth it,_ he decided when his sister tossed the dirty rag he’d thrown at her right back at him. Some sacrifices were necessary to win wars. He jumped off the stool he was perched on, pausing only a second to soak the rag in his bucket before he chased Dís around the forge - it wasn’t a very long chase and she was laughing too hard to put up much of a fight. Thorin too advantage of her distraction, grabbed her round the middle and squeezed the cold water down the back of her tunic, making her yelp.  
  
Twisting and squirming in her brother’s grasp, she elbowed him hard in the stomach, which forced him to let her go long enough for Dís to get him in a headlock and force him, face-first, into the slack tub. Gasping and sputtering, Thorin swept his sister’s legs out from under her and sent them both crashing to the floor. Dirty water dripping from his hair and beard, he pinned her beneath him and spoke the first words that passed between them since their impromptu water fight began. “This is war!”  
  
“‘Course it is!” Dís headbutted him in retaliation, the day’s work and their own ages quite forgotten, and they proceeded to get themselves absolutely filthy wrestling on the floor of the smithy. There wasn’t a great deal of room, in their enthusiasm they knocked all manner of tools to the floor and one of them - Dís swore it was Thorin, naturally her brother maintained it was the other way round - overturned the bucket of (nearly) clean river water, soaking them both to the skin and causing a minor flood all over the shop floor.  
  
Time got away from them and the next thing the siblings were conscious of, apart from hands pulling their hair, fists pummeling their chests and knees in their backs was a roar of laughter from the side entrance. Dwalin cast his long shadow over them and they looked up through wet, dripping hair and sooty faces to see the tall dwarf with two smaller companions peering around his waist staring wide-eyed at the elder pair of royal siblings, caked in dirt and debris, the sister sitting on the brother’s chest while one of his broad hands shoved her face away from his.  
  
The two brothers looked at each other before breaking out in identical grins of glee.  
  
“What are you two _doing_?” Fíli fairly shrieked, cackling in undisguised delight. “We left you to clean up the forge and _this_ is what we come back to?”  
  
Kíli performed an uncannily accurate imitation of one of his mother’s put-upon sighs, complete with placing his hands on his hips. “ _What_ are we going to do with you? Corners!” He pointed to two opposite sides of the forge, referencing the hours he and Fili spent over the years forcibly separated on stools facing the sitting room walls when their play got a little too rowdy.  
  
“Ah, Kíli,” Fíli sighed, shaking his head in exaggerated disappointment. “ _What_ is to be done with these little idiots?”

“You’re very funny,” Thorin groused, removing his hands from his sister’s face and patiently waiting for her to get off him.  
  
“You can’t stay dwarflings forever,” Kíli chided, wagging a finger at his mother and uncle and clucking his tongue.  
  
Dís stood up and extended a hand to help haul Thorin to his feet. “Sorry, is that meant to be me?” she asked Kíli, raising an eyebrow and trying to salvage the remains of her dignity. “Because I think you’ve got the measure of Dori, my love.”  
  
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,” Dwalin remarked from the doorway, dodging a swat from Dís. “Go for a wash; we’ll straighten up the mess.”  
  
The grins on the brothers’ faces vanished like a candle snuffed in a high wind. “That’s not fair!” Kíli complained. “That’s not our mess!”  
  
“We didn’t do anything this time!” Fíli agreed, looking at the water and ashes all over the floor with undisguised dismay.  
  
Dwalin silenced them both with a look. “The number of times your ma and uncle’ve cleaned up after your doings, I think they’re owed one in return.”  
  
“Owed _one_?” Dís asked her brother as they made their way to the riverside to clean off the worst of the grime. “I think Dwalin’s short shrifting us.”  
  
“Probably,” Thorin nodded. “Though it could be he started the tally back when _we_ were dwarflings. Evens things out.”  
  
Dís considered that logic and found it to be sound. “Well, I’d say we’re owed five, at least,” she said, taking over her boots and outer garments before stepping into the stream. It was hardly balmy by any stretch of the imagination, but the afternoon sun meant it was no longer icy.  
  
Thorin followed his sister in and that might have been the end of it once and for all if he didn’t feel a deliberate surge of water splash right in his eyes accompanied by badly concealed laughter.  
  
 _Well,_ he reasoned, crouching down enough that his fingers scraped the river bottom, _a handful of mud ought to show the impertinent little miss..._


End file.
